Friday, June 3, 2016

I've written about Drea on here a few times, as she's one of my best friends and has always been a supporter of my quilting endeavors--and my life in general! I am happy to announce that she and her husband, Mike, welcomed a beautiful baby girl, Veronica Jane, on April 30th. I finally met her last weekend, and she is a little doll. Beautiful and warm like her mama, and curious and observant like her dad.

Drea knew she would be having a daughter and she kept me posted on decor for the nursery, so I was able to pick out fabric that was 1) a little bit girly, and 2) tied into the nursery's forest theme. Most of the fabric I picked came from the Owl & Co line by Riley Blake, featuring all sorts of cute owls, hedgehogs, squirrels, and birdies in pastel colors. I didn't want the quilt to be too pink, so I used green as a focus color for the blenders, binding, and back.

The pattern is based on this one, but I adjusted some of measurements. It has two large strips of the main animal fabric with rows of charm squares. As usual, I stressed out over the arrangement of the blocks so that similar colors and patterns weren't touching, but the variety of fabrics I used helped out quite a bit! I believe the final size of the quilt was around 40 x 55", so it's fairly large for a baby quilt. The quilting lines echo the charm squares, which gives the large strips of fabric a nice texture!

I am a sucker for cute animals!

Some of the blenders, like the Joel Dewberry pink hexagons and Lizzy House pearl bracelets below, came from my stash. The binding is from Connecting Threads' Good Neighbors line. (I ordered several different fabrics in various shades of green before deciding on that one!)

The backing is from Riley Blake's Halle Rose collection, and I was able to snag it on sale. I really love that shade of green! It's screamed "spring" to me. I used some extra Owl & Co. fabrics to piece together a strip on the back and added an embroidered note.

This quilt came together pretty quickly with no major snafus. I surprised myself by having it ready to go for Drea's baby shower in March. The big reveal:

And here's Veronica and I, hanging out for the very first time, with her quilt in the background:

About Me

In 2011, I decided I needed a new hobby, so I started sewing and embroidering for the first time since middle school. This blog is a record of what I've made so far! I'm an editor for an educational publisher, and my other passions are books, music, and travel.